Forrester have just released a new report, The Connected Agency, which anyone interested in what agencies will look like in 5 years time should read (it's free, but you need to register first). Brian Morrissey sums it up:

In Forrester's view, a simple fact is driving the need for wrenching change in how advertising agencies are structured: consumers increasingly do not trust marketing messages. Instead, they rely on advice from friends and others in their various communities to make product decisions, while using tech tools to tune out ad messages they deem irrelevant.

Simon Andrews, Digital Chief Strategy Officer at Mindshare, also comments:

Being a factory dedicated to producing 30 second commercials, websites, banners and buttons or mail packs is not a viable business in an age where consumers are AdAvoiders and media is evolving so fast.

Update: Peter Kim has rounded up the reaction to the report.

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Lest we forget:

I think we've typically thought about marketing as the creation of moments – communications, events, spectacles, launches, etc. Similarly, I think these moments make up only a very small part of the view customers have of a brand. Instead the vast majority of what informs a person's view of a brand is the day in, day out usage of the product/service.

[via]

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A nice audio presentation on how youth culture can gives clues about new ways to share information, and why competing with pirates is often better than fighting them:

More from the author here.

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Following on from my two posts on the subject of microsites last year, Andrew Walmsley has piled in:

They dilute brand equity and perform poorly in search. They might look attractive in a conventional advertising sense, but they frequently fail to deliver in digital terms.

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A great article from Peter Merholz on product [or service] design

When you start with the idea of making a thing, you're artificially limiting what you can deliver. The reason that many of these exemplar's forward-thinking product design succeed is explicitly because they don't design products. Products are realized only as necessary artifacts to address customer needs. What Flickr, Kodak, Apple, and Target all realize is that the experience is the product we deliver, and the only thing that our customers care about.

Read the whole thing.

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Just watch:

Conversely an ad from Anomaly for Converse.

Update: An insight into who they are.

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On Thursday, I went along to Social Media Club London and listened to Antony Mayfeild say things like:

Revolutions are sudden changes, but they are also things which take place over time and the effect of which increase as time passes. The web is a revolution that will continue to bring incredible undreamt of changes to our lives for as long as we live and for some time afterwards, I expect. We know little about where this will take us in ten years time, let alone fifty. What the historian of 500 years time … will make of what happened … we can only guess at.

It was great. See you at the next one?

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Shaun McIlrath, Creative Director at Hurrell and Dawson on how to do Direct:

it is your job to help your clients be uncorporate – to be human. You can do it through comms, or by working within the company to help make it more accessible and helpful to the customer – but do it, because it will make their behaviour more distinctive and their comms more engaging.

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Brian Morrissey:

The success of “Elf Yourself” is one of several web initiatives that have attained viral fame while others with flashier technology or in-depth storytelling have fallen short. Their secret: Keep it dead simple, make it personal and give people a reason to pass it on. These sites might not win awards or wow other creative directors, but they draw big audiences by eschewing the urge to add on features and functions.

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Hugh MacLeod with a seminal post on social objects:

From now on you won’t have the TV Commercials to rely on to start your conversations. People are ignoring you. The only way your product is going to spread is by word of mouth. The only way it’s going to get word of mouth is if there is something in it for the person talking about it.

The person you want talking about it is not doing it for the money. She'll only talk about it if it serves as a Social Object. A "hook" to move the conversation along. A hook she can use it as a way to relate to her fellow human beings.

You should read all of Hugh's post.

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